China is the world's largest consumer market for coatings, and for a long time this huge market was dominated by a small number of foreign brands. However, with the strong rise of national brands, three of them have become the new industry leaders with their rapid growth performance and good brand image, which has formed a strong impact on the leading position of the traditional hegemon Nippon.
Can Nippon Paint still stand alone? And will the rising star 3Trees have a chance to replace Nippon Paint and reach the top of the industry?
Based on the local area, build channel barriers
Although Nippon Paint has been working in China for many years, as a native national brand, 3Trees, which is well versed in Chinese wisdom, has cleverly avoided head-on confrontation and quietly established a huge channel network in third- and fourth-tier cities, with tentacles penetrating deep into counties and townships. Today, 3Trees has 200,000 outlets across the country, forming a channel barrier that is difficult for Nippon to surpass.
At the same time, 3Trees also attaches great importance to the development of small B-end business. The small B-end covers regional real estate enterprises, office buildings, hospitals, municipalities, etc., which is exactly the area that foreign brands that mainly focused on the large B-end of real estate collection and procurement are relatively neglected. 3Trees has been one step ahead of others in actively transforming into a small B, and has continued to make efforts in multiple tracks and scenarios such as urban construction and urban investment, industrial plants, hospitals, and schools, and has continuously consolidated its leading advantages.
In the retail sector, 3Trees also maintained a rapid growth trend, promoting the transformation of high-end retail online and offline. Deeply cultivated mainstream e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Taobao online, and the number of followers has surpassed that of foreign brands such as Nippon, and at the same time, it has vigorously expanded Douyin and Kuaishou e-commerce to achieve online omni-channel coverage; Offline, it uses home furnishing store experience stores, art paint experience stores and other models to drive the transformation of high-end retail and achieve a three-dimensional channel layout.
In the future, with the rise of the stock housing market, 3Trees is expected to fully absorb dividends by leveraging its huge channel network in urban and rural areas. Nippon, which has weak growth in the big B-end, has gradually turned to the small B-end and third- to sixth-tier cities to seek new growth points, and there are shortcomings in the attributes of multinational enterprises in terms of mechanism flexibility and localization integration, and they are bound to face the pain of transformation, and they may fall behind in the short term.
The core of culture accumulates national genes
More and more people are beginning to favor domestic brands, which shows that the influence of national feelings in consumption decisions cannot be underestimated. For the general public, domestic brands tend to have more affinity and identity. Even the century-old Nippon State is inevitably estranged by Japanese ancestry.
From brands to products, 3Trees is insisting on injecting national cultural genes with the times. For example, last year, we joined hands with the Palace Museum to jointly launch the "National Paint and National Color" high-end art paint series, which not only fits the current national tide culture, but also realizes the perfect integration of traditional Chinese color aesthetics and modern paint materials, and has been widely recognized by young consumer groups.
At the same time, 3Trees is also helping major national sports events, applying self-developed water-based two-component polyurethane industrial coatings to design helmets containing the images of Chinese mythological heroes such as Nezha and Dasheng for the Chinese short track speed skating team and Chinese cycling team, showing the national scientific and technological strength with its strength.
In addition, 3Trees has also responded to the national call for "Beautiful Villages" and vigorously developed rural revitalization and village reform projects. With the rapid development of the beautiful rural market, 3Trees Imitation Stone Paint has also achieved a compound growth rate of more than 60% for 8 consecutive years, becoming a new growth engine for the company.
3Trees not only internalizes cultural self-confidence into brand heritage, but also turns it into product and channel advantages, which is also a unique path that is difficult for foreign brands like Nippon Paint to replicate.
Innovation-driven, consolidating the growth of new tracks
In the face of the sluggish growth of traditional architectural coatings, from the perspective of the industry, 3Trees has already set its strategic sights on the future competition track of the industry, and has rapidly deployed Nippon Paint in emerging fields.
On the one hand, 3Trees has increased R&D investment and launched innovative industrial coating products such as epoxy glass flake paint, power battery fireproof coating, and insulating powder coating, laying a solid foundation for entering the fields of new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, and wind power, with the intention of subverting the long-term monopoly position of foreign brands in the industrial coatings market.
On the other hand, we will look at overseas markets, and plan to increase market layout in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa and other countries and regions this year, so that national coatings will follow the "Belt and Road" to the world stage.
In terms of scale, category, channels and R&D strength, 3Trees, a national brand among the top 20 in the world, has undoubtedly become Nippon's most threatening competitor in the Chinese market. The dualistic competition situation has been formed, and in the future, the two sides can be said to attack and defend, staggered forward, and will stage a protracted tug-of-war, and Nippon will be in a passive defensive state for a long time.
The three trees have been fruitful and the road has been bumpy, and the process of catching up and surpassing them will surely gather the expectations and pride of the whole nation. Nippon, the traditional hegemon, is being violently shaken by rising stars, and its difficult moment has come. How to deal with the challenge of national brands in order to continue to live in Huajiangshan? We'll see.